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Dec 9

Dec 9 C.S. Lewis in Tokyo

The
bookstore was only a few steps away from one of those intersections
where it seems like half of the population of Tokyo is headed one
direction on foot and the other half is going the other direction in a
bus, in a taxi or on a bike.

A steady stream of customers flowed right off the sidewalks into the
long rows of Japanese newspapers, magazines, comics, computer books and
novels. There wasn’t much to look at, if you couldn’t read Japanese.
But near the checkout desk I found a revolving display rack of
English-language paperbacks.

Sure enough, there were plenty of books by Stephen King, John
Grisham and Tom Clancy. I turned the display and there was the Oprah
book club. Then one more turn and there was “The Lion the Witch and the
Wardrobe” and the other six volumes of “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

I wasn’t surprised. You can walk into just about any mainstream
bookstore on Planet Earth and you will at least one shelf dedicated to
C.S. Lewis, the witty Oxford don who wrote “Mere Christianity,”
“Miracles,” “The Problem of Pain,” “A Grief Observed” and numerous
other works of popular Christian apologetics.

And then there are the Narnia books, which remain a phenomenon in
children’s literature, selling millions of copies year after year even
though it has now been half a century since Lewis finished the first
volume. Come back in 2050 or thereabouts and let’s see if you can find
new editions of Harry Potter books selling in the same rack as the
bestsellers in a Tokyo bookstore.

The books are, of course, full of good stories that pull children
through that mysterious wardrobe with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy and
into a world populated with talking beasts, fawns, wizards, giants,
dragons and legions of other wonderful and horrible creatures. Narnia
is created, redeemed and ruled by the great lion Aslan, the “son of the
Great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.”

The books full of child-friendly Christian symbolism and parables,
of course, but they also are laced with adult messages about politics,
theology, science, economics and who knows what all. The books can be
read time after time by readers of all ages and that’s precisely what
millions of readers do, generation after generation.

But that is not why the 50th anniversary of “The Lion the Witch and
the Wardrobe” has been celebrated as a major publishing event. That is
not why all of Lewis’ books remain in print and many remain
bestsellers, decades after his death in 1963.

What matters the most is that Lewis set out to write books that were
good enough to be read by bright people — young and old — all across
England and, then, around the world. He did not set out to be a popular
Christian writer. He set out to be a great writer — to produce what he
called popular “little books” — who appealed to everyone. As people say
in the American South, Lewis didn’t settle for “preaching to the choir.”

“What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more
little books by Christians on other subjects — with their Christianity
latent,” argued Lewis, in an essay entitled “Christian Apologetics.”

“Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same
yesterday, today and tomorrow) in the particular language of our own
age,” he added. The bad preacher and apologist “does exactly the
opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the
traditional language of Christianity.”

Lewis, of course, knew what he was saying about his own goals and
motivations. He knew that he was paraphrasing the words of St. Paul,
who reminded the leaders of the early church that “Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday and today and forever.”

So Lewis was setting the highest possible standards for his work, in
the here and now and in eternity. It’s sad that there are so few
religious believers who are willing to pay the price to follow his path
into the mainstream.

You see, it’s hard to produce stories, and books, and songs, and
movies, and magazines, and newspaper columns that appeal to ordinary
readers in America and around the world. It’s easier to produce
Christian products that sell to Christian consumers who occasionally
visit Christian stores.

But it is highly unlikely that you will find many stores of that
kind only a few steps away from busy intersections in Tokyo, or London,
or New York City.